As a candidate, if you can’t or won’t answer these key questions, I won’t work with you.

I’ve noticed an interesting trend in the marketplace over the last few months when talking to potential candidates.

The trend is that more and more potential candidates in my sectors (especially software engineering) are not interested in having a conversation about themselves and their current environment. They just want to see the job spec. To give an example, I spoke to a candidate yesterday who put his CV on a job board and then got defensive when I phoned him (out of office hours) and started asking him simple questions about his current employment situation. If you don’t want to talk chap, don’t put your CV on a job board. Simples.

Those of you who know me know that I will share everything with a candidate about an organisation including its challenges, its culture, its goals and the part that some candidates are wrongly seeing as the holy grail – the job spec. But before we stampede towards the job spec, I need to know you might fit before we get going. Believe it or not, I can’t get that from your CV. Yes I could play buzz word bingo and just score your CV against the technical requirements of a job spec, and then after that, yes I could just fire your details off to the client. But get this, I’d rather get it right for you and the client rather than just spray and pray.

So with that in mind I thought I’d post my key questions on my blog and create some awareness to the differences between someone like me and a CV flyposter.

If you can answer these questions or are prepared to answer them and you work in broadcast convergence, information security or software engineering then Storm is a good option for you when you are looking next.

Here are my key questions. No rocket science, no hidden agenda’s, just three straight questions.

1. Why are you considering a career move?
2. What is happening in your current job – Are there things that could change that would make you want to stay?
3. What else are you looking at and how does what I have compare?

The bottom line for me is that if you are prepared to invest time in me understanding what motivates you I can bring your details to life when talking to potential employers. I will still want to meet you as well and also help you prepare for interview but that is for another time.

See you next week…

Beesy: A really smart note taking App

I don’t normally promote products on the blog but came across a fantastic app which is making such a difference to me, I thought I ought to share it. I was introduced to David through a client last week. David has recently launched a start-up, BeesApps, to deliver, in my opinion, a really smart note taking app for the iPad: Beesy

I’m mentioning it because it is currently on the AppStore at a launch price for a limited time. If you have half the meetings I have this App will make a big difference. So without spoiling the fun of discovering all the features and benefits for yourselves, the key benefits are simple and strong:

- replace your pen and paper with a fast and structured note taking app

- send instant meeting minutes right after the meeting

- take control of a powerful reporting tool based on your notes and your calendar.

There is a very short demo video which you can access here: Beesy video

Take a look at it. A five minute investment of your time will save you hours down the line.

The 8 Things Your Employees Need Most

A great piece by Jeff Haden this week in Inc Magazine. So good in fact I thought I would post it in its entirety on the blog. Thank you to Jeff for allowing me to do so. You can hear more from Jeff at @jeff_haden on Twitter

The 8 Things Your Employees Need Most

Forget about raises and better benefits. Those are important — but this is what your staff really wants. Pay is important. But pay only goes so far. Getting a raise is like buying a bigger house; soon, more becomes the new normal. Higher wages won’t cause employees to automatically perform at a higher level. Commitment, work ethic, and motivation are not based on pay. To truly care about your business, your employees need these eight things—and they need them from you:

1. Freedom.

Best practices can create excellence, but every task doesn’t deserve a best practice or a micro-managed approach. Autonomy and latitude breed engagement and satisfaction. Latitude also breeds innovation. Even manufacturing and heavily process-oriented positions have room for different approaches. Whenever possible, give your employees the freedom to work the way they work best.

2. Targets.

Goals are fun. Everyone—yes, even you—is at least a little competitive, if only with themselves. Targets create a sense of purpose and add a little meaning to even the most repetitive tasks. Without a goal to shoot for, work is just work. And work very often sucks.

3. Mission.

We all like to feel a part of something bigger. Striving to be worthy of words like “best” or “largest” or “fastest” or “highest quality” provides a sense of purpose. Let employees know what you want to achieve, for your business, for customers, and even your community. And if you can, let them create a few missions of their own. Caring starts with knowing what to care about—and why.

4. Expectations.

While every job should include some degree of latitude, every job needs basic expectations regarding the way specific situations should be handled. Criticise an employee for expediting shipping today, even though last week that was the standard procedure if on-time delivery was in jeopardy, and you lose that employee. Few things are more stressful than not knowing what your boss expects from one minute to the next. When standards change make sure you communicate those changes first. When you can’t, explain why this particular situation is different, and why you made the decision you made.

5. Input.

Everyone wants to offer suggestions and ideas. Deny employees the opportunity to make suggestions, or shoot their ideas down without consideration and you create robots. Robots don’t care. Make it easy for employees to offer suggestions. When an idea doesn’t have merit, take the time to explain why. You can’t implement every idea, but you can always make employees feel valued for their ideas.

6. Connection.

Employees don’t want to work for a pay slip; they want to work with and for people. A kind word, a short discussion about family, a brief check-in to see if they need anything… those individual moments are much more important than meetings or formal evaluations.

7. Consistency.

Most people can deal with a boss who is demanding and quick to criticise… as long as he or she treats every employee the same. While you should treat each employee differently, you must treat each employee fairly. (There’s a big difference.) The key to maintaining consistency is to communicate. The more employees understand why a decision was made the less likely they are to assume favouritism or unfair treatment.

8. Future.

Every job should have the potential to lead to something more, either within or outside your company. For example, I worked at a manufacturing plant while I was in college. I had no real future with the company. Everyone understood I would only be there until I graduated. One day my boss said, “Let me show you how we set up our production board.” I raised an eyebrow; why show me? He said, “Even though it won’t be here, someday, somewhere, you’ll be in charge of production. You might as well start learning now.” Take the time to develop employees for jobs they someday hope to fill—even if those positions are outside your company. (How will you know what they hope to do? Try asking.) Employees will care about your business when you care about them first.

Wise words indeed.

Why I think you should be continuing to find the best people rather than triggering a recruitment freeze across your business.

I think it is fair to say that we are in uncertain times at present. Having recruited through difficult times before I know that some business leaders will now be adopting a traditional response to what we are seeing in business today. They will be seeing their sales reducing, their revenue falling and decide that ‘cost centres’ are where the hits will be taken. So recruitment is frozen, HR switches into consultation with said business leaders and announcements are made about reductions in numbers of staff. I can hear CEO’s saying “yes it is true, we didn’t hit our sales numbers but we did streamline our costs”. I have seen it many many times before.

I agree that expansion and new headcount may not make sense at this time, BUT, hiring the best people must surely still always be top of the agenda. The best people will help grow and maximise the opportunities that mediocre people cannot achieve. So my question is this. Does a recruitment freeze make sense if recruiters can attract you better people? Simple answer. No.

You might turn around and say, “We’ve already hired the best people John, you may have even helped us with that”. Well that is great to hear, but don’t forget that once you’ve recruited the best people, you need to retain them. I truly believe that the best people know their value and that they are also much happier to take risks in a recessionary job market as they know they will always find work. In my view it is the weaker performers who stay where they are adopting a “last in, first out” mindset. All that does is weaken businesses.

So CEO’s, don’t hide behind the old argument of tough times and no bonus or salary review if you want to hold onto your best people. If you can’t expand I would suggest you manage out poor performers and continue to allow recruiters to attract you better people in their place. The perpetual self-improving workforce will go a long way to retaining your best people.

Recruitment has never been so vital. Do you and your business recognise that?

See you next week…

The blog has had a little holiday on the NHS

The blog has been fighting an ongoing problem which finally got the better of him last week and an enforced sabbatical ensued. Rested up and sent home with tablets he will be back in action next week. Some of you may have preferred your week without his two peneth and if that is the case, apologies, but your silence is soon to be shattered.

Beware the counter offer

Last week I had the unfortunate situation where a candidate accepted a counter offer. Counter offers are a normal part of the recruitment process and in the last two years I have only had a couple of instances where one was accepted and one of those was last week. So given that I thought I’d write something about it for the blog as it’s an issue that candidates often ask me about as we move through the process.

When I meet a candidate for the first time the first question I normally ask is “why are you looking to move jobs?”. If the answer that comes back relates to money I normally pack them straight off back to their current employer and tell them to discuss it with them. 17 years has taught me that this is a classic counter offer scenario and the time invested by me and clients will be more than likely wasted. If the only thing you want is more money your current employer can give you that if they feel you are worthy of it. If, however, you are looking for career growth, greater responsibility and to expand your skills then for me the process can begin. As a recruiter all of these reasons need to be documented because if the counter offer does surface then the reasons given for moving need to be revisited with the candidate so that they are refocused and realigned.

As a candidate, if you do receive a counter-offer to entice you to stay, and that’s what it is, an enticement, be very wary. No matter how good it makes you feel to have your current employer respond with a counter offer, my statistics gathered over the last 17 years show that the vast majority of employees who accept counter offers from current employers aren’t in those jobs for very long. Whether the employer admits it or not, your dedication will be questioned and once that happens your time in the job is limited. It’s worth breaking it down to the stark reality that is that from walking through the door of your bosses office to walking back out again has resulted in a pay hike. Ask yourself these questions:

Weren’t you worth the new pay level anyway?

Why did you have to resign to get it?

It is far better to tactfully decline the offer and focus on your new job with your new employer.

Okay there may be circumstances where you are offered more responsibility and greater opportunity. The reality is though that you’ll be more than likely looking again inside 9 months as the playing field wasn’t that level to start with. My advice to employers who have employees walk through the door with an envelope and a sheepish look on their face is to let them go. By all means question why they are leaving and do an exit interview as part of the process but let them go.

I guess from there the most important job search rule to remember when resigning from any job is that if possible you never want to leave on bad terms, mainly because doing so could come back to haunt you later in your career. Courtesy and professionalism go a long way in all walks of life. It’s worth remembering that the job search is a funny process and you never know when you’ll run into your former supervisor, a former colleague, or a former employer. So when writing your letter of resignation, be professional. Regardless of whether you loved or hated your job or your employer, the outcome should be the same: a short, polite, and professional letter stating your intention to leave on a specific date.

My candidate took the money last week rather than moving onto the next stage in his career. The reality for him is that he is now being paid more money to do a job that isn’t stretching him and had already left him quite bored. Those were his words at interview, not my interpretation of the situation. The saddest part for me is that he has turned down an opportunity to work with cutting edge technology and some of the brightest minds in the broadcast media space. I respect his choices, it’s his life after all. I think someone once sang that money can’t buy you love. In this case as with most counter offers, that is just so true.

Twittering away and getting LinkedIn to Facebook through Blogs equals greater candidate flow.

Last summer I talked in the blog about the lack of top end candidates on the market and how over the last eighteen months I had witnessed a sharp decline in the availability of them in the digital media, information security and software development markets. What I didn’t say was that this was in the main job board centric.

What I have noticed more and more since last summer is that I have been initially connecting with candidates in a different way a great deal of the time. The top end candidates are still there but they aren’t posting CV’s on job boards as they did previously. As a specialist recruiter I believe I notice this more than a generalist as I live in these markets all day every day. I also record everything, I always have, so I know where the candidates come from and how they like to interact. So my update since last summer is that I’ve decided I was wrong to talk about a decline in availability of top end candidates. They are still there. Lately though I have had to find them rather than they find me through a job board or be introduced by someone who I have worked with that rated my service as above the norm.

I work within the Start-Up and SME sectors and have always tried to embrace factors such as social and cultural fit as well as demanding the most relevant digital ready skill sets to enable the candidate I represent to compete against other candidates from other agents at interview. Whilst the era is different it does feel like it did in the .com age. The difference now though is that there is more technology to enable us all to connect with one another. Job boards are still relevant, but not half as relevant as they were.

So as a client or a candidate I recommend you connect and build a relationship with a specialist recruiter relevant to your organisations product or service who has embraced the social networking interaction highway. They will have a far bigger pool of potential candidates that are engaged long before your vacancy emerges and if they don’t have the person they are more likely to find them than you are by simply putting an advert on a job board. The best candidates have in my opinion always been passive and I am finding that Twitter and LinkedIn to name but two are far more relevant than job boards are now because of their passive nature. Clients and candidates can also find out far more about me and Storm and choose whether they wish to interact and start building relationships.

At Storm we are still very busy working hard for the clients and candidates we have built relationships with whilst working on developing new relationships to strengthen and widen our portfolio. We have had a great start to 2012 and have some interesting candidates, roles and organisations to discuss with you whether you be new to Storm or an old friend.

You can also connect with me on Twitter @stormysolutions, through the website or by finding our relevant Storm Recruitment Services pages on LinkedIn or Facebook.

See you next week…

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 47 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Merry Christmas

Just wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2012. I am about done now at Storm towers until the 28th December and the blog is now on holiday until the New Year.

Take care and have fun.

Storm Recruitment Services in running for place at Dragon’s table.

The Evening Star today announces two lucky local businesses which have made the shortlist in the Local Business Accelerators (LBA) competition. The nationwide campaign, which was launched in October by regional and local newspapers across the country and backed by Prime Minister David Cameron and Dragons’ Den star Deborah Meaden, will see 1,500 firms receive £15million of free advertising to help boost their businesses in 2012. The judges – Celia Hodson, director of the Eastern Enterprise Hub, based at the James Hehir building on Ipswich Waterfront, and Star Editor Nigel Pickover – reported that entries were of a high standard, with enthusiastic local firms recognising the benefits that local advertising can bring.

One of the two businesses to make the LBA shortlist is Storm Recruitment Services Ltd, a niche recruitment business based in Ipswich. Also making it to the finals is Battlefield East Anglia, which gets youngsters outdoors enjoying computer-type games.

The firms will now be visited by one the judges before the lucky winner is selected by the judging panel. As well as receiving top professional advice from our local business mentors, their prize also includes a substantial allocation of free advertising space in the pages of The Evening Star. In addition, Deborah Meaden will also become a mentor to one overall business, picked from the hundreds of regional winners, providing invaluable business support throughout 2012 to drive their business forward. Ms Hodson said: “It was great to be able to select from so many new local businesses and difficult to pick our eventual winner. “The prize, of an advertising campaign in The Evening Star, is a fantastic opportunity for a new business to take their message into readers’ homes to develop new audiences for their brand and products. “Working to support early stage businesses, as we do at the Eastern Enterprise Hub, we understand just how hard new entrepreneurs work to raise awareness of their brand and just how valuable this exposure will be to a new business.” The lucky winner will be announced in the Star on Thursday, January 12.